A Katy man is wanted in connection with the shooting of former MLB star David Ortiz.
Federal agents believe 43-year-old Victor Hugo Gomez was the mastermind behind the shooting, although local authorities said it was a case of mistaken identity.
Ortiz, also known as Big Papi, was shot in the Dominican Republic on June 9 while he was dining with a friend outside at a restaurant. Dominican authorities said the man Ortiz was eating with was the intended target.
That man is Gomez’s cousin, Sixto David Fernandez. Authorities believe Gomez ordered Fernandez’s murder because Gomez suspected Fernandez of turning him in to drug investigators in 2011.
Gomez is wanted by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. He was indicted by the DEA in March following a drug sting known as Operation Wrecking Ball for his alleged involvement in a major drug operation of possessing and distributing cocaine, as well as conspiracy to conduct financial transactions.
“You don’t expect anything like that around here,” said a Katy woman who didn’t want to be identified.
She lives down the street from one of the last known addresses of Gomez.
Neighbors said the raid in Katy happened around the end of the school year.
“There was a raid,” said the woman with whom we spoke. “We had no idea what was going on. Nobody in the neighborhood seemed to know anything about them.”
Gomez is considered a dangerous fugitive in one of the most-watched shooting cases in the world. He’s one of more than a dozen suspects wanted in relation to the Ortiz case.
Ortiz is in good condition and recovering at Massachusetts General Hospital.
Doctors in the Dominican Republic removed his gallbladder and part of his intestine before he was wheeled into an air ambulance sent by the Red Sox and flown to Boston.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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